#the things I write for fun

[localcuttlefish]

A Theoretical Lore Bible of Caesar’s Legion as a Nation

Hello good citizens of Tumblr! I’ve been on a Fallout: New Vegas kick lately, and I recently graduated college with a bachelors degree (major illustration, minor history of art and western civilization). So now that I’m certified to draw dick AND talk about Ancient Rome, I have things to yap about.

Have you ever looked at Caesar’s Legion and wondered how the more intricate aspects of their society model after the Roman Empire? Because I have! And because of those very musings, I have come up with a little dumb idiot theoretical lore Bible on how The Legion might function as a more developed nation, using my back knowledge of western civ and Roman art and culture. Nomenclature, societal structure, industries, imports and exports, the whole nine yards!

DISCLAIMERS: I have not looked through the writers’/directors’ social media accounts thoroughly enough yet to confirm if any of the information I’m bringing to the table is already solidly canonical or solidly non-canonical in the lore of Fallout: New Vegas. There is a nonzero chance I may say something that someone in charge has already said, or something that’s already been disproven or denied. If you catch something I don’t, let me know! I like worldbuilding for fun like this, and I want to keep everything as lore-cohesive as possible to challenge myself. I’ll come back to edit this every now and then if I come up with more cohesive lore pieces, or if you guys have any suggestions that would tie in the lore better. In addition, Caesar’s Legion is an inherently totalitarian nation that supports itself on some pretty sexist and bigoted social structures. There is no universe in which I support, condone, or otherwise encourage any of the ideologies of Caesar’s Legion in real life. Don’t become a tyrant dictator of a military slave nation, kids!

CONTENT WARNINGS: Discussion of slavery, sexism, physical and verbal violence, unsafe medical practices, brainwashing/psychological abuse, and death.

Without further ado, the absolute wall of text that is the theoretical lore Bible of Caesar’s Legion. Enjoyyyyy!!

CHAPTERS:

I: Citizenship

- How To Become a Citizen

- Social Castes

- Names

II: Everyday Life

- Common Social Customs

- Household Structure

- Settlement/Town Structure

- Clothing, Hair, and Accessories

- Languages

III: Industry

- Jobs

- Imports and Exports

IV: Politics, Education, and Religion

- What Senate?

- In The Unlikely Event of a Transfer of Power

- Common Political Beliefs

- Male vs Female Education Standards

Walk and talk with me about the ways The Legion mirrors, juxtaposes, and takes inspiration from Ancient Roman society in a post-apocalyptic setting.

The first time I encountered Caesar’s Legion in game, my initial thought was “What about the American West makes these people think this is the perfect spot to reinvent Italy?” it’s a barren, land-locked desert with only one or two significant water access points. Italy is a peninsula in a temperate climate with high mountain ranges and verdant forests. Most of this was a jokey thought, but then it struck me that a phalanx would actually be an insanely powerful force in a flat landscape. It all started coming together from there in a most dreadful shape

I: Citizenship

- How to Become a Citizen

Caesar’s Legion is a colonialist nation. They gain land through conquest, typically, and have a tendency to try and homogenize the culture to their liking. Generally speaking, after a town has been conquered, people who willingly surrender or submit to The Legion are given an opportunity for citizenship. Any survivors of conquest that aren’t willing to surrender are either executed or sold into slavery. Slaves are not considered citizens, because the rights and freedoms of a slave do not reflect the rights and freedoms that The Legion offers to those who can be put to better use or are complacent with the mission of The Legion.

Once one is offered a chance for citizenship, the highest ranking general in whatever battalion just took over that person’s land will evaluate if the person can be put to work, put on the battlefield, or is generally useless. Remember, an offer isn’t a guarantee. There is a chance someone who is offered citizenship may be evaluated as useless and sold into slavery regardless of their complacency. Protesting the verdict typically increases the chance of spontaneously being executed, or, if one doesn’t like their proposed role of worker or soldier, being demoted from potential citizen to slave.

If the general regards one as fit to work or fit for the battlefield, these “half-citizens” (media populi for plural, and media persona for singular) will be assigned a new legal name after a record of all new media populi is sent from the general to the regional Vilicus (overseer ;) we’ll elaborate more on this in chapter II), and given the task of minimum 400 hours of what we would understand as “community service” before the Vilicus confirms their citizenship. This “community service” is called pentimento, or repentance. It’s a form of brainwashing in which The Legion is in a position to repeatedly reaffirm that the media persona has more value here helping The Legion than they ever did as a free settler in New Vegas before, and instills dynamics that empower and encourage violence against people of “lower status” (slaves and women, usually). Kinda like a Stanford Prison Experiment that’s purposely designed to cause power dynamics instead of accidentally stumbling to the conclusion. Pentimento may include anything from helping re-pave and clear trade routes in Legion territory, to catching runaway slaves. Each media persona is given a number of tasks to complete per month, and each failed task results in more hours being added onto the total pentimento before citizenship is granted. The number of initial hours of pentimento a media persona needs to do may vary depending on the whims of the Vilicus, how much they resisted Legion control in the past, how many tasks of pentimento they leave incomplete per month, and whether they are masculine or feminine presenting, but is never less than 400 to start. Most media populi end up with starting numbers in the 600s or 700s.

Once the pentimento hours are complete and approved by the Vilicus, the media persona becomes a citizen and is expected to continue the service to the growing empire through either the trade they work in, or through service in the army. However, there is a several-month-long window of time in which spies occasionally visit the new citizens’ homes to monitor them for suspicious activity. In this window of time, spies may be looking for signs that indicate the new citizen is an agent from a rival faction sent to infiltrate The Legion. Only high-ranking officials know about this window. One can lose their citizenship and be returned back to status of media persona if they show suspicious behavior during this time, or worse, be demoted from citizen to slave. In cases where there is undeniable evidence that a new citizen is an agent for a rival faction, the citizen is immediately put to death, and their citizenship is revoked (though revoking the citizenship of someone being put to death is a little redundant).

A baby born into a family of two Legion citizens is automatically also a citizen, and must be given a name in line with Legion naming conventions (which will be discussed next segment). A baby born into a family in which the mother is not a citizen and the father is a citizen will also be considered a citizen. A baby born into a family in which the mother is a citizen and the father is not a citizen will not be considered a citizen at birth. A baby born to a family of two media populi or two slaves will not be considered a citizen at birth.

A person who willingly enters Legion territory and requests citizenship will follow the same steps as how a person from a conquered land would be evaluated for citizenship.

- Social Castes

Social Castes in Caesar’s Legion are determined by how useful one is to the empire, and whether one is male or female. The more sexist aspects of the caste system stem from the fact that women in The Legion can’t serve in the military, and the military is a notably higher status than most other castes since Caesar’s Legion is a military state.

Of course, Caesar is the highest on the social pyramid, followed by his chosen officials (take Lanius for example), then chosen guards (praetorian guard). The military comes next, with the social hierarchy of the military following that which was established in the Roman Empire in the early establishment of Caligula’s reign. After that, religious officials (which act as pseudo-indoctrinators into The Legion, and therefore are pretty essential to brainwashing the next generation of Legionnaires). Then, the Vilici, the overseers of each region/settlement. Next, the average male citizen and then, the average female citizen. Media populi come next, and following that social caste is performers (which serve very little purpose in the eyes of Caesar and the goal of conquest), with male performers having marginally more respect among the populous than female performers. Second to last is slaves, once again with males being just a little more respected than females, but what does that matter when both are going to be abused by the upper castes anyways. At the very bottom of the social ladder is outsiders and criminals, which need to be broken before earning even a sliver of humanity in the eyes of The Legion.

Caesar > Chosen Officials > Chosen Guard > Military (with sub-hierarchy of Ancient Roman military) > Religious Officials > Vilici > Average Citizen > Media Populi > Performers > Slaves > Outsiders and Criminals

- Names

The average citizen in Legion territory wouldn’t need to immediately use their new assigned name (since there’s not enough force immediately available to actually push that, the nation is still growing), but The Legion will give them a “legal” name that they’ll be addressed by formally, and in the best case scenario, the original name will be effectively waned out because it simply doesn’t matter in comparison to the new one.

A praenomen acts effectively as a first name one uses around close friends and family, while a nomen (while acting as a last name) becomes what one is more commonly known by in public. The average citizen will usually have a nomen at least, and a male citizen will have a praenomen and nomen.

- MASCULINE: A classical Latin praenomen will be assigned equivalent to the meaning or phonetics of the new citizen’s first name. The nomen will be determined based on either phonetic/meaning equivalent of the last name, or based on the new citizen’s occupation.

- FEMININE: No praenomen will be assigned. The citizen’s title will be a feminized variation of their father’s nomen, differentiated in generation by number nomenclature (Major, Minor, Tertia, etc). If they have no father, they will assume the feminized nomen of a living male partner that is already a Legion citizen. If they have no living Legion family, they will be assigned the name “Romana” and likely be either sold into slavery or auctioned to a bachelor to gain a proper nomen.

For example: Marcus Gaius has two daughters. The eldest daughter is Gaia Major. The youngest daughter is Gaia Minor. Gaia Minor meets Decimus Junius, and they get married. Now Gaia Minor is named Junia. Gaia Major remains unchanged.

Legion soldiers have more dignity in society, and therefore have all the previous conventions, plus a cognomen. Since all Legion soldiers are masculine, differentiation between masc and fem naming conventions is irrelevant from this point forward. The nomen of a soldier may be akin to the structure of how an average citizen’s would be given, or if the soldier shows exceptional prestige and has no remaining male family, a nomen referencing warfare or combat will be assigned to them (Marcus, Augustus, Drusus, etc.).

A Legion cognomen acts effectively as a Roman military callsign. Cognomens follow classical Roman conventions. The cognomen will be used most frequently in a military setting.

II: Everyday Life

- Common Social Customs

Many Roman social customs are adopted into Legion life. For example, the entertainment at the colosseum is mimicked in the tourneys in the various arenas scattered throughout Legion territory. However, because of the key difference in that The Legion isn’t even pretending not to be a totalitarian dictatorship, there are a number of drastic differences between Roman social customs and Legion social customs.

Because of how respected the military is in Legion society, it is commonplace to show soldiers with utmost reverence. It’s customary to allow soldiers to stay in a citizen’s place of residence if the soldier requests it, and it’s customary to refer to the soldier by their military rank, not their nomen or cognomen (especially if the soldier in question is on duty). It’s considered rude or inappropriate to question the motives of a soldier, or prevent a soldier from accessing areas of a citizen’s property. Such transgressions can potentially be met with violence.

One may frequently see slaves struggling to keep up with workloads. It’s taboo, but not punishable to help them, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the productivity of one’s own work. After all, The Legion gains nothing from incomplete work. If helping a slave means increasing efficiency, then it’s appropriate, but a citizen may get strange looks from others for doing so.

Utilitarianism is the ideal philosophy under which everyone should function in an ideal Legion society, but this is clearly not the case nor the environment to foster it. Social norms are based strongly on class, and in most cases, selfishness prevails because selflessness can be seen as weak (or worse, suspicious) by trigger-happy soldiers and spies.

But hey, at least sex isn’t considered a super taboo topic or activity in Legion society. Got that much going for them. Granted, it’s seen more like a conquest, but at least it’s not seen as a sin. Woohoo? Lets go? Kinda? One step forward two steps back.

- Household Structure

A household in Legion territory for a citizen of average means will likely be similar to any other household in New Vegas (with the addition of slaves in wealthier households). Where things start to get confusing is the aforementioned situation of soldiers being allowed to invade households at will. Psychologically, these soldiers are deprived of a lot of comforts the average citizen may have. There is a decidedly nonzero chance that soldiers can show up like stray cats and keep coming back in the event that a citizen is interesting enough to them. Soldiers sometimes “claim” houses or small patches of territory they frequent as a substitute for the emotional interaction they lack. Humans are social creatures. The soldiers might not know why they want to keep coming back, but they do keep coming back. Parasocial.

Generally, a woman’s domain is the household in Legion territory. While the society is by no means matriarchal, it’s customary for a woman to maintain control over most happenings within a household. This often means a woman will need to interact with stray soldiers more frequently. Among female citizens in Legion territory, these soldiers are called catuli (singular catulus) for their presence and tendencies, though this is always in secret due to the harsh punishment of misrepresenting a soldier’s status to his face. A household can sometimes have up to three catuli claim it before fights start to break out among them about perceived territory.

It is expected for a couple in a household to have children. Cultivating multiple generations of soldiers is part of how The Legion grows most efficiently, because children are impressionable enough to instill Legion values without struggle. If a household does not have a child after several years of partnership, it is considered suspicious and the male of the partnership is encouraged to be unfaithful or open the relationship. While there are no consequences for not having children, there is intense pressure to do so.

- Settlement/Town Structure

As mentioned before, the equivalent of a mayor in each region is called a Vilicus, or an overseer. The Vilicus is responsible for tallying the census, assigning names to media populi, approving the pentimento of media populi, keeping track of production rates of resources from citizens, keeping a lookout for disease outbreak so a region can be quarantined if needed, and monitoring the citizens in each region for minor suspicious activity to report to those higher in status. Each town is also occupied by a heavy military presence, to intimidate citizens into productivity and complacency.

Most of the time, Legion towns are made of the previously conquered settlements now added to Legion territories. Building more houses is an avoidable expenditure if they just repurpose the structures already there with a few modifications. Despite the multiple depictions in-game of Caesar’s Legion showing little to no care about what damage they cause, it would make sense that the depictions in the gameplay are actually the outliers in the situation, since it’s far more efficient to leave the settlements intact and just gut and reconfigure the purpose.

There are also multitudes of mobile scout settlements, mostly made of fabric, tarp, and hide tents that can be easily condensed and moved in the event that the camp is compromised. In many cases, these camps are set up as a base to return to in order to stage an invasion of new territories. If possible, The Legion sets them up close to large landmasses like plateaus or mountains for additional cover in the event of an ambush. If that’s not available, The Legion makes settlements like this close to preexisting towns in order to make the wordless threat of “push us back, and innocents die”. Generally, very few citizens are taken on these excursions, but if the plan is to stay out longer, citizens who are medics may be involuntarily drafted into going with the scout team.

- Clothing, Hair, and Accessories

The Legion isn’t a necessarily materialistic society that allows a lot of room for personal expression. Since the goal is to create a homogenous society and culture, self expression through visual cues is often muted at best and absent at normal. Makeup, perfumes, and hair styling products are prohibited if they have any synthetic qualities or materials. In many cases, beauty products are exclusively reserved for performers, and even still, only natural pigments and materials would be permitted. Think the same pigments Ancient Egyptians would make for their makeup.

Protective updo hairstyles are common for long hair, both for practical purposes and for purposes of keeping hair out of reach and harder to pull. Efficiency is key, so in the event of a raid or a threat, everyone is expected to be able to hold their own to some extent. Part of that standard is remaining on guard, so keeping hair up while out of the house is customary.

In the military, hair is expected to be cut short, again, for efficiency. Any soldiers with long hair are expected to keep it in tight braids or cornrows to maintain the same level of efficiency. As long as it stays out of the face.

Most clothing is dull, salvaged from the wastelands. The only exception is clothing reserved for high ranking officials and Caesar, which is quite literally dyed in blood of enemies. Because blood fades to a blackish-red hue over time, high ranking officials will often appear to be wearing darker colors, when in actuality they’re wearing clothes that were soaked in blood as a symbol of power and debt paid to the gods (namely Mars).

Widows are permitted to wear part of their fallen husband’s bloodsoaked clothes through the mourning process, if The Legion can recover and identity the body. With this in mind, as soon as the widow finds a new husband, the bloodsoaked garment piece is burned.

Slaves are deprived of all aspects of individuality, given rags or scraps to wear and marked with red paint. A citizen may give finer clothes to a slave voluntarily, but those clothes must also be marked with red paint.

Jewelry, while rare, is often made of scrap metal salvaged and re-forged from battlefields or old weapons without any further use. Which is why jewelry is so rare. There is seldom ever an instance in which metal can’t become a weapon, so making jewelry is a waste of time and energy.

- Languages

Basically any language can be spoken in Legion territory as it stands, because as The Legion is currently, it doesn’t have enough power or force to totally instill a whole new language system. With that in mind, the groundwork is being laid for an eventual push to make Latin the official language of Caesar’s Legion. Between the commonly used Latin terminology to address people and the Roman theming of The Legion, it’s primed to eventually enforce Latin as the primary language. Highly educated citizens may be fluent in Latin, and most soldiers know commands and codes in Latin.

III: Industry

- Jobs

There are two types of jobs in The Legion, excluding military and slavery. One can either be a worker or a performer. Medics and nurses are highly valued, both on the battlefield and off, since chemical substances are prohibited in The Legion. Carpenters, metalworkers and blacksmiths, engineers, and tanners are some of the more important standard worker jobs, since all of them play directly into expanding the empire more efficiently, making more weapons and armor, or repurposing old material to make new. Tailors, glassworkers, weavers, technicians, and chemists are less valuable to The Legion to some extent because they either involve industries less geared towards conquest, or involve industries beyond the scope of what The Legion finds socially acceptable. Despite the amount of emphasis Roman polytheism puts on naturalistic sculpture, The Legion actually doesn’t find the arts very useful in the immediate future of the empire. What’s most important is conquest, not expression.

On the topic of the arts, performers were seen in a very poor light in The Legion, often oversexualized into objectification or framed as clowns. Most performance art is often seen as a waste of time or an avoidable expense, but it does keep soldier morale up since it gives them something to target that isn’t their fellow man. Being a performer in The Legion is marginally better than slavery, because one can at least have a house as a performer, but the physical and verbal abuse is often daily and unrelenting.

- Imports and Exports

The Legion is definitely not known for being friendly to neighboring factions, so any concept of import and export is often very loosely based in barter (namely, The Legion demanding tithe to barter for leaving a region alone, similar to how some mafias demand payment in exchange for protection from themselves). The Legion has a semi-steady stream of imports from their commonwealths which they pressure into helping them in trade for leaving their towns unburned and their people free from enslavement. However, this is decidedly not a permanent arrangement. This is a way to bide time to grow the nation a bit more before making moves on settlements and regions with more useful resources.

They export nothing unless it’s a strategic play. They pressure neighboring regions into paying them, even though they honestly don’t need it as much as they want the general population of other factions to think they do. Middle school bully nation.

IV: Politics, Education, and Religion

- What Senate?

The big difference between Rome and The Legion is that The Legion doesn’t try to pretend it’s not a dictatorship. There is no senate, there is no board of people to vote, no forum. The only voice that matters is Caesar’s, and it shows in every aspect of how the society is structured, from the strict rules on self expression, to the patriarchal hierarchy of Legion society. Ultimately, this makes the nation weaker, because in the event of Caesar’s death, it creates a power vacuum. No, I don’t think there’s a secret senate. No, I don’t think there is a solid backup plan. I think the closest thing there was to a senate was the two-man power-team that was Edward Sallow and Joshua Graham. We all know how well that worked out. And I think Caesar’s been running on fumes ever since that point, taking this as a sign to expand the nation faster before anyone sees him bleed. Hubristic in nature.

The closest thing there is to a senate are higher officials (such as Lanius) that Caesar hand-picked from Legion ranks to be his personal cabinet that all agrees with him. There is a distinct instability of power when recreating Rome without a senate, and there is the distinct air of trying to hide that open wound.

- In the Unlikely Event of a Transfer of Power

Let’s say, hypothetically, Caesar, the praetorian guard, and all his higher officials suddenly died. The role of Caesar would be up for grabs. In the event that there is no clear successor to Caesar, there is no real backup plan aside from an arena battle between the generals that could potentially succeed Caesar. A simple solution that will clearly show who can spill the most blood for Mars without hesitation or question.

With this in mind, there is one thing distinctly Roman about the potential of a transfer of power. There is always a nonzero chance that Caesar’s killer, be they foreigner or Legion, could become the next emperor. All that matters is who can devote themself to Mars in a way that would honor the fallen Caesar.

- Common Political Beliefs

Politics and religion go hand in hand for Caesar’s Legion because of the cultish way Caesar built the nation. The idea of Mars being the patron deity of The Legion instills a level of gratuitous and overzealous love of warfare among the people. Military expenditures are met with great support, and very little infrastructure on public service is supported as adamantly because of the instilled value of “we are all independent cogs working in a well oiled machine, we don’t need help”. Then again, it’s not like any other voice mattered anyways, since Caesar is the be all end all of political power.

There is a generally nationwide extremism when it comes to dealing with criminals, however. Criminal activity in The Legion is more often than not punished by torture and death, and nobody seems to really protest it to the degree that other factions do. As many of the travelers and traders in Fallout: New Vegas have said, the roads in Legion territories are incredibly safe. There is a level of patriotism in The Legion specifically regarding how safe their lands are, but in exchange, those lands also have an active military presence.

Conquest is also a pretty intrinsic pillar of Legion political beliefs, since the motivation to create a homogeneous society and usher in a new era of perceived piece may make some people accept the totalitarian power for what it is and hope it pans out right.

- Male vs Female Education Standards

Due to the intrinsic divide between male and female Legion citizens, the education of male and female Legion children is vastly different with the only exception being the uniform brainwashing. Male and female children are not only educated on different topics, they are also educated in different locations.

Similar to Spartan men, most male children (even including orphans from freshly raided towns) are give combat training just about as soon as they can hold a stick and swing it. The male children that show combat proficiency continue to become soldiers, and the male children who aren’t strong, but are intelligent are instead divided into training as either spies or medics, depending on the specifics of their skill sets. Male children who aren’t good at any of that end up becoming armigeri (singular armiger), the people who sharpen weapons and tend to the needs of more proficient soldiers. It’s a social tragedy to become what is essentially a pathetic sidekick to some far better soldier. Thankfully, since most of these children are trained from an incredibly young age to be strong, cunning, fast, and durable, very few people end up becoming armigeri. Generally speaking, no boy in The Legion goes without military training. The Legion can capture their blacksmiths and carpenters, there’s no need to train them in-house.

Female Legion children are not given formal education. They are expected to grow up to be housekeepers and produce the next generation of warlords. However, a family still has the liberty to educate a daughter at home with a tutor so long as it doesn’t interfere with the family’s productivity. Usually, female children are given medical teachings more oriented towards patching the injuries of their future husbands. However, girls aren’t left entirely defenseless. Girls are taught how to use ranged weapons and how to escape grapples in the event of an emergency. In addition, girls are given more of an education on finances and practical skills that tie into long-term survival, such as how to use every part of a killed animal for resources, how to patch clothes, and how to cultivate plants.

A Thank You And Some Concluding Comments

Hello hello to anyone who’s made it this far through my ludicrous ramblings! Thank you for reading! This is really just me throwing nonsense in the air and seeing what floats, and most of what I’ve written here will probably be subject to edits every now and then to keep building up what I’ve already put down.

Feel free to use this lore for any fan fictions, fan art, original characters, or whatever else! Please keep building on it!

I hope y’all enjoyed my insane chattering!

[beyourghost]

and obviously you find yourself thinking oh i do wish i could get severed to do this one thing. would you actually maybe not. but you do wish you didn't have to undergo medical procedures you do wish you didn't have to do the things that give you anxiety you do wish you didn't have to do tedious tasks that barely even require you to be present for them. it's tempting. that's why the premise works. but the premise is also that somebody has to do it. somebody has to go to the dentist and somebody has to get on that plane and somebody has to write those thank you notes. just like somebody has to clean the house and somebody has to harvest the food you eat and somebody has to make the clothes you wear. you can't eliminate inconvenience you can only delegate it. you can't eliminate suffering you can only delegate it. and always the easiest way to live with this is to see that somebody as less than. less than you less than people. and if that somebody has to wear your body to do it well maybe it's not all that different. they're not a person. you are. it's capitalism all the way down baby

[geezmarty]

(bellara/taash) nerd/jocks lovers rise up

[all-my-ocs-are-evil]

[insert poetic title here]

fun fact: this did not start out as isat fanart

(rambling in tags)

[chipper-smol]

[lgbtlunaverse]

Nothing will dispell the "the curtains were just blue" myth faster than writing something yourself, because the amount of pretentious symbolism i am putting in my silly little fanfics is ridiculous. I mean SO much with these words, literally every single one of them. This fic has twenty five typos and zero correct uses of punctuation but if there's curtains you bet your ass I put thought into what colour they were.

[centaurianthropology]

Murderbot as a ‘Cringe’ Litmus Test for the Audience (a.k.a., we are culturally the Corporation Rim)

One of the more interesting things I’ve seen in discussions of ‘Murderbot’ are how many people are not happy that the show made the Preservation team more explicitly hippies.  After all, per our current cultural zeitgeist, hippies are silly, over-earnest, over-feeling, over-EVERYTHING. Why is this team of scientists holding hands and humming?  Why are they taking breaks in the middle of a tense situation to reassure a colleague that they love him? Why do they stand around playing music and dancing during their downtime?  Why did the show make them “Cringe”?

And that got me thinking again about the current cultural antipathy toward sincerity and openness.  People who are seen as open and sincere beyond a fairly narrow scope of emotional expression are treated as deeply weird, off-putting, and most importantly for this conversation, as INCOMPETENT.  You can’t be goofy and competent.  You can’t believe in the power of love and friendship and holding hands and taking a dance break, and still be a good scientist.  You can’t have one of the unsexy sorts of mental health problems (panic disorder) and be a good leader.  In our current cultural moment, you have to be Cool.  You have to be unaffected by both the horrors of the world and the day-to-day joys. 

I think that a lot of people see themselves in ‘The Murderbot Diaries’, and a lot of them understandably love the very anticapitalist tone of the books.  And they wanted Preservation to be Cool Space Communists.  Hypercompetent at all times, serious, without flaw.  Because any personal flaws might be taken as flaws in their cultural and political leanings, right?  And we can’t have silliness or goofiness or fun in our Communist Utopia, or people won’t take us seriously.

But to me, the tension is so much better, so much more real and human and FUN. And it makes the audience question their own implicit biases as much as SecUnit is going to have to contemplate its implicit biases.  This team is comprised of highly talented scientists from a culture that values emotions and, yes, activities that we the audience have been culturally trained to think are Cringe.  They do have a humming consensus circle—so that anyone in the team can have veto power over a decision that has major ramifications not only for a research project, but for their own ethics.  They do like to play music and dance when they’ve got some free time, even if that music would be considered embarrassing or offputting to outsiders.  They do openly love one another and support one another, even in—no, especially in—challenging times.  It’s good to have that tension, both to tell the story and to give the characters and the AUDIENCE an emotional and thematic arc.

Let’s use Dr. Mensah as a the best example so far of this tension. Mensah is a good leader.  In every scene where she’s with the group, she’s the heart of it.  She’s always weighing the fears, the thoughts, the feelings, and the arguments of her friends to come to a decision.  She doesn’t feel like Gurathin’s right about not trusting SecUnit, but she’s also very aware that he knows more about the Corporation Rim than she does, and that his arguments, while rooted in his fears, are rational.  So she ends up deciding that they’ll leave the SecUnit behind for their mission. 

And it’s the wrong call. Going out to the dark site in the map without the SecUnit almost gets her killed. But her decision to climb the scree pile alone makes sense, because she doesn’t want to further endanger Bharadwaj, and if she doesn’t climb up there with her equipment, they won’t get important information about what’s going on with their survey data. And yes, while she’s climbing she has another panic attack. But she keeps climbing through it. Hell, she even takes a moment to encourage the teamwork between SecUnit and Gurathin, because that’s an important part of being their leader.  And, yes, they both roll their eyes because they still don’t like one another. But the important thing is that she’s created this sense of openness, of acceptance, of love.

Being a good leader doesn’t mean making the right call all the time.  It means learning from both right calls and wrong calls.  It means creating an environment where people can be wrong, and learn from their mistakes, and try again to get it right.  And it works!  Gurathin may roll his eyes, but he also has the space to apologize for getting it wrong. He has the space to fuck up and try again. And that is created by her encouragement, by her openness, by her caring even when it becomes embarrassing to a man raised in our culture the Corporation Rim, where open emotion is something to smirk at.

And when she’s alone, Mensah falls apart.  When no one can see her, she has panic attacks, because things are starting to go pear-shaped for these people she loves.  Because one of her dear friends nearly died, and she wasn’t there, and apparently that could happen at any time because their maps are faulty, and the only real rescue is an untrustworthy bond company that is a week away at best.  That’s a perfect recipe for a panic attack, but she hides them because she knows what she needs to be for her friends and colleagues.  She is the leader, and damned if she’s going to let something like her panic disorder stop her from doing that.

That’s not incompetent, that’s incredibly courageous.  Her bravery lies in being afraid and pushing through, not being flawless from the off.  The bravery and the competence and the things that eventually are going to win Murderbot over to loving these humans ARE their flaws and the fact that they don’t let those flaws stop them from trying to be the best people they can be, while also being true to a culture of being open and loving to the point that they can come across, to the jaded construct or audience member, as Cringe.

I think we’re going to see more and more of that as the show unfolds.  We’ve only just laid the groundwork, and established the initial impressions of all the characters.  They are being set up for arcs, and by electing to let the Preservation team be more out-there, more earnest, more Cringe, they’re setting the audience up for an arc too.

Anyway, loving the show, can’t wait for the DeltFall storyline to kick off tonight.  And I love this crew being highly-competent space hippies with realistic human flaws, who love and support one another.  In an unrelentingly Cool, Bleak, and Edgy television landscape, it really is nice to have kind characters be free to be their kooky selves without the show judging them for it.

[raynewolferune]

DC x DP Prompt: Bruce is bad at emoting but at least ghosts are empathic (too bad bat kids are not)

Was reading Twincognito on AO3 when I stumbled across this gem again:

~

" “Danny, Tim. I was just…checking in. Is everything alright?” Curse his inability to make meaningful conversation when it wasn’t a life or death situation.

They glanced at each other and shrugged.

Then Danny hauled himself out of the bed and walked over to Bruce.

Bruce tried not to let too much excitement show on his face. "

~

Now I really want to read a story where Bruce adopts Danny post Meta trafficking and is being his usual emotionally constipated self. His kids keep getting mad at him because he's treating their new meta brother who was trafficked poorly (generally being stilted in conversation with him, walking away hurriedly mid-conversation, avoiding Danny when he's feeling really awkward, etc). They think Bruce is discriminating against Danny for being a civilian, meta, dealer's pick, but really it's just Bruce being horribly socially awkward. Danny knows this because of ghost empathy and find the whole thing hilarious. The whole thing comes to a head with the Bat Kids staging an intervention in the Bat Cave.

[stump-not-found]

au fanfic art dump yaaaay

i'm almost at 30k words who knows when i'm gonna start posting it lol

[egophiliac]

I loved your drawing(and I love your style in general) with Leia in your recent post! If/when you have time can we see more of her in your style? I get so happy whenever I actually see people mention/talk about her and she’s not just forgotten because we didn’t get to see much of her. 😭

thank you! 💙💙💙 Leia/Leah/Lea/whatever is fascinating to me. she is the ultimate unknown. what was she like? how involved (or even aware of any details of the invasion) was she? Silver's basically a physical carbon copy of his biodad, so what did he get from her? like, I understand why the two of them kind of have to stay as these super vague and mysterious figures -- the whole point of them is that their story ended 400+ years ago and they're not really relevant anymore (and. well. the more that gets explained about them, the less that can just kinda be handwaved as "oh the politics were Very Messy") (we can sit here and theorize all day but let us acknowledge that, ultimately, canon gave us almost nothing about them post-Meleanor and we'd just be making things up). I do still wonder about her though! RIP Lea, we never knew you and we probably never will.

actually you know what, as long as we're here, I think I WILL go ahead and just make some stuff up about what Silver might've inherited from her instead.

[jamtamart]

the last disco

[fidgetspringer-art]

Boots on throats, as promised.

[taraxippos]

I think people tend to assume that any criticism of worldbuilding is ultimately a demand for a story to grind itself to a halt and give the reader 20 paragraphs of exposition, and like. Most of the time good-faith criticism of this nature is coming from a core aspect of the story not being grounded in the setting in a way that outright detracts from the story's quality. You fix it not by Explaining but by Showing it passively in the makeup of the world.

Like the last instance I saw this critique in was like 'you can't expect an author to stop and exposit the nuances of gender roles/Queerness in a fictional society' and it's like yeah I don't, and in fact this is actually one of the easiest things to show in the text without exposition. If a society has gender norms to begin with you'll see aspects of these norms baked into EVERYTHING. You'll see it in its stories, its religion, its taboos, its etiquette, its clothing, its family structures, its language, its insults, its labor, its leadership, etc. It will have massive impacts on how characters interact with one another and how they perceive themselves. It will help Shape your characters.

If you do this legwork to begin with for the core facets of your story, you will find very natural places for these concepts to be demonstrated without derailing the plot and with little to no exposition. THAT sort of thing is what's being asked of you.

[inkskinned]

we were sitting on the floor and i was cutting out tiny pictures to make a collage for a friend's birthday. you were on your phone and you laughed about something, and i was still in love with you then, so i asked what had you giggling.

"sorry. i was just..." you took a moment and went back to texting. "i was telling someone about how you're afraid of the dark."

i'm afraid of the dark because something bad happened. "oh." i felt a little slinky of shame crawl down my throat.

you glanced up, and maybe it showed on my face, because you rolled your eyes and held the phone to the side casually so i could see the group chat. "what? was it a secret?"

i looked down to the scissors in my hand. "i just..." no, it's not a secret. it just felt like something private, something serious. saying why would you tell someone that just feels like an accusation. it's unfair. i honestly am not even ashamed of it, it's just a fact about my person that i don't usually share.

what a strange experience. is this a human thing or a generational thing? for our grandparents: did they need to worry about how quickly someone can just... share your personal information? again, i didn't even really have a true objection. what could i say? i want any person in my life to feel they can be honest with their friends. it's not like i said don't tell anyone this.

i cut out another letter to complete the rainbow happy birthday, started hunting for the exclamation mark. i heard you sigh dramatically.

"don't make a big deal about this," you said.

this entire conversation was a pattern for us, and this was when we got to my least favorite part of the pattern. i would get my feelings hurt in some oblique not-technically-terrible way, and then it would be making a big deal about something. you'd get frustrated for me for being soft, but i was born soft. you knew i was soft when you pierced me. it's one of the things that made controlling me so easy.

"i'm not," i felt my voice crack. the question came without my wanting. "why are you guys talking about me?" and why are you saying that thing? why not like - i'm telling them how you're generous and kind and pretty.

you let out this low, tragic groan. "oh my god." you tossed the phone away from your body. "there, see? i just won't talk to them if you don't like it."

the rest of the hour went the way it always went, between us: i said i don't actually mind if you talk to your friends but -, you found a way to call my minor expression of discomfort "being dramatic." you got upset that i had been offended. i ended up apologizing, even though i hadn't actually done anything.

afterwards, you picked up the phone again. after texting for a little bit, you snorted. "okay," you said, "but it is kind of funny you're afraid of the dark. i mean, when you think about it."

[tourettesdog]

I am begging people to be normal about completed fics, and in particular one shots.

I am begging people to stop demanding more from authors, and insisting that one shots need to be longer or have sequels.

I don't think yall understand how many fanfic authors are one more "where's the rest of it?" comment away from throwing out any plans they might have had to continue an idea.

Unless an author like specifically says they might write more for an idea, just-- assume something marked as completed is complete, and respect it as it stands, please.

[sweeneydino]

2012 spreading the trauma.